cleverly hidden in cotton clouds / a cartoon camouflage

Back in 2019, we blogged about and reproduced the drawing from a wartime cartoon by British artist Bernard Hugh. Originally published in The Bystander, it was reprinted in Cartoons Magazine in 1917. It proposed an ingenious method of camouflaging an airplane while in flight: that it could be camouflaged by sandwiching it between large clumps of cloud-like cotton wool. Looks like a fine idea to me. Recently, I fed Hugh's cartoon drawing to an AI processor, and the image above is what it produced.

RELATED LINKS 

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

british dazzle plane is mostly black and jazzy yellow

DAZZLE PLANE IS ENGLAND’S LATEST in Times Daily, March 3, 1925—

LONDON, England (UP)—Airplanes “like flying zebras” have joined the British air navy.

Officially, they are known as “dazzle planes.” They [are] splashed with color in an extension of camouflage so that even a short distance away, while in flight, it is impossible to tell what kind of machine it is.

Tests with several of these airplanes were made at one of the Royal Air Force stations.

Witnesses said that the “dazzle planes” seemed “all out of proportion,” with the fuselage in some places apparently badly bent. It looked, said one, as if the wings were about to fall off.

The colors chosen were mostly black and also jazzy yellow.

•••

Image credit: Animated version of print from David Versluis and Roy R. Behrens, Iowa Insect Series (2012)

Aldis Lamps, Bolo Bananas, and Some Dog's Body

Caption for an illustration (shown above; artist’s signature unclear) from The Aeroplane: The International Air Transport Journal. London, c1919—

THE AIR POLICE—It has been officially stated that we are to have an Air Police Force. Probably it will be International and Local at the same time. As the designing of new uniforms is one of the most important duties of the Air Authorities, a few suggestions are offered—for which no charge will be made. Reading from left to right they are as follows—(A) Provincial Police. Armament as shown. (B) Metropolitan Police. Fitted with Aldis Lamps, Bolo Bananas and Pockets. (C) Our French Bobbies would no doubt prefer “camouflage” as a distinction from the ordinary gendarmes. (D) The Irish Constabulary would, of course, want something different from anyone else. (E) The City Police would, no doubt, go in for something quite “Posh.” (F) And “over there” the Air Force Sheriff would be “Some dog’s body.”

WWI proof / children know the meaning of camouflage

Above and below These are two uncredited photographs that appeared in American publications during World War I (c1918). The top one shows the camouflage-patterned wings of a National Service airplane. The patterning works as well as it does in part because it is a grayscale photograph, so the dark disruptive shapes on the wings and tail blend in all too easily with the shadows and other irregular shapes on the ground. In addition, the symmetrical target-like circles contradict whatever confusion is caused by surface disruption.

The photograph at the bottom is even more suspect, if for different reasons. It claims to show three children holding up a toy model airplane on which they have painted a comparable disruptive scheme. The caption for the photograph reads—

Even youngsters soon learn war terms. These three, for instance, are proud to display their toy aeroplane [airplane], the mottled finish of which shows that they know the meaning of “camouflage.”

Today, in an era in which digital photo retouching is epidemic, we may not be surprised to find that this pre-computer image appears to have been retouched by hand. The contours of the chidren’s figures, as well as the shape of the airplane, have undoubtedly been strengthened, and the facial features of the figure in the center look suspiciously like an adult. 

RELATED VIDEO SERIES

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

camouflage, infrared photography, aerial surveillance

Above Page 2 of the Color Feature Section of the Boston Sunday Post, December 27, 1936. It discusses wartime camouflage in relation to infrared photography, and credits the achievements of Albert William Stevens (1886-1949), US Army Air Corps, a balloonist and aerial photographer. 

In a Wikipedia biography, it is noted that (in 1930) Captain Stevens “took the first photograph of the Earth in a way that the horizon’s curvature is visible,” and that, two years later, he “took the first photograph of the Moon’s shadow projected onto the Earth during a solar eclipse…”

Gerome Brush and his memorial to Edward Thaw Jr.

Kasebier portrait of Evelyn Nesbit (1903)

Above Portrait of actress Evelyn Nesbit, made by Gertrude Kasebier (c1903), at about the time when she was allegedly seduced at Stanford White's New York architectural studio, an event that was later a factor in the shooting of White by Harry K. Thaw.

•••

Susan Wilson, Garden of Memories: A guide to historic Forest Hills. Boston: Forest Hills Educational Trust, 1998—

As you ascend [Milton Hill at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston], you’ll see on the left one of the cemetery’s most unsual portrait sculptures. A winged, iron-clad archangel Michael stands by a beautiful young man, resting one hand on the youth’s shoulder, and another on a sword. The monument commemorates aviator Edward Thaw Jr (1908-1934) of Milton, who crashed in the mountains of New Mexico, while piloting a private plane from Quincy to San Diego.

Edward was the nephew of Harry K. Thaw, the millionaire who murdered handsome society architect Stanford White on the roof of Madison Square Garden in 1906. White’s crime was his tempestuous affair with showgirl Evelyn Nesbitt—his “Girl on the Red Velvet Swing”—prior to her marriage to Thaw. Thaw was aquitted on grounds of insanity.

Nephew Edward’s memorial at Forest Hills, commissioned by his mother, Jane Thaw, was sculpted by Gerome Brush. Son of well-known painter George DeForest Brush [and early aviator and airplane camoufleur Mittie Taylor Brush], Gerome studied art as a child in Europe [he was named in honor of French Academy painter, Jean-Leon Gerome, his father’s teacher], and was apprenticed to a Florentine marble carver. Upon returning to America, he worked on the World War I military [ship] camouflage program, and became a respected portraitist and painter, as well as an architectural and memorial sculptor.

•••

Below Roy R. Behrens, Death Announced, digital montage (2021), in which various vintage public domain graphic components have been altered and recombined. In the center background is a digitally-colored photograph of an enshrouded Evelyn Nesbit, being steadied by an assistant, as she appears in public for the first time after the death of Stanford White.

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens 2021

pioneering aviator and camoufleur Mittie Taylor Brush

Above Group photograph of Mary (Mittie) Taylor Brush, with her children. Both she and her artist-husband, George De Forest Brush, were pioneering contributors to the study of camouflage, both natural and military. In some of their efforts, they collaborated with their Dublin NH neighbor, Abbott H. Thayer, as did their son, Gerome Brush, a sculptor (standing on the left in this photograph). Public domain, Archives of American Art. In 2016, we featured an earlier blogpost about Mittie Brush, but only recently have we found a substantial news feature about her invisible ariplane, the full text of which is found below.

•••

Earl Murphy, WIFE OF NOTED N[ew] E[ngland] ARTIST INVENTS INVISIBLE AIRPLANE—CARRIES IT OWN LANDING LIGHTS, in Boston Sunday Post, July 22, 1923, p. A4—

Here is an airplane that is invisible by day, that travels through the heavens at night like a giant firefly, lighting its own way to the landing field.

It is the invention of Mrs. Mittie Taylor Brush, wife of George De Forest Brush, the noted painter.

Mrs. Brush became deeply interested in aviation during the war [WWI] and has practically completed the experiments which resulted in a plane that sees without being seen.

•••

Thanks to Mrs. Mittie Taylor Brush, it will soon be unnecessary for you to get kinks in your neck from gazing at the airplanes that float overhead.

Pretty soon you won’t be able to see the contraptions at all and goodness knows, few of us are foolish enough to waste our time looking at something we can’t see.

Mrs. Brush, who is now at her summer home in Dublin NH, has an invention which makes airplanes invisible. Like the small boy, they will continue to be heard, but, unlike the small boy, they will not be seen.

Mrs. Brush is the wife of George De Forest Brush. And he is one of the world’s greatest living artists. That is why it seems strange that Mrs. Brush should be an inventor, that she should live in a world of stresses and strains and angles of refraction. The wife of an artist is expected to be somewhat of an artist herself. It is difficult to think of her as an extremely practical person, interested in mechanical things.

Flyer’s Bugaboo
To Mr. Brush, however, it is all very simple and natural.

“Art,” he has said, “is the purgation of the superfluous.”

And that is the answer.

Mrs. Brush is an artist. She is engaged in purging aviation of some of its superfluous difficulties.

The first is the matter of visibility. The second is that bugaboo of all fliers, the problem of selecting a safe landing place at night.

Why, you may ask, need an airplane be invisible?

It doesn’t need to be—at present.

But there were times during the war, when our aviators were flying over the battlefields in France, that an invisible plane would have been a handy thing.

It was during the war that Mr. Brush became interested in inventions for the development of the airplane. Mrs. Brush shared his interest. An artists who has devoted his life to his art naturally knows very little of carburators and valves and the intricate doohickies that make up a high-powered airplane engine. But he does know color. He has used color to give bodies to his ideals. Certainly he can use his colors to make material things as invisible as ideals. That is called camouflage.

Battleships were painted in weird streaks and patterns which made it hard for the enemy to see them. Trucks and tanks and guns were so treated that they would melt into the landscape.

The planes presented an entirely different problem.

It is very easy to see an airplane flying against the clear sky. Paint it what color you will, the drumming of its motor advertises its presence and its wings and body stand out in silhouette. With all his artistry and knowledge of color, Mr. Brush could not camouflage an airplane.

But Mrs. Brush could—and did.

Seated in an enormous living room of her farmhouses in Dublin, she told of it modestly enough. That living room is a wonderful place for the discussion of aviation. The ceiling is the roof. The rafters are bare. There is a huge fireplace, showshoes hang on the wall, and in a corner, an old-fashioned spinning wheel.

“It struck me,” said Mrs. Brush from the shelter of her wide-brimmed straw, “that if we couldn’t make a plane invisible with color, we might do it without color. After all, color is the only thing we see. If a thing has no color we cannot see it. We do not see a clean window. We look through it, as if it were not there at all. An airplane that has no color cannot be seen.

“The problem reduced itself to a matter of finding a transparent material to use for covering the wings in place of the ordinary linen. Glass would not due. It was too heavy. Experimenting was a dangerous business. I have never piloted a plane, but I have frequently gone up as a passenger. In flying, as in everything else, the only way to determine the value of an innovation is to try it out. That means flying and the risk of crashing if your scheme fails.

“We tried several things until I hit upon this celluloid composition. It is transparent, has the thickness and strength of linen and built on a base of course copper wire mesh, but the stuff ripped and split. When this material is used for wing covering, it is difficult to see a plane even at such a low altitude as 300 feet. The government took my invention, but the war ended before it could used extensively.

“We had a Bieriot plane down at Mineola [NY] in which we made several flights. It was covered with this material, which is called Chrystal. When we went up at night, it was necessary to build fires all around the field so that we could find our way to the landing place and avoid rough spots on the ground. This difficulty in landing is the great obstacle in the way of night flying.

“My success with the transparent wing covering encouraged me to go farther. If a plane can carry its own light it is independent of landing fields and guide lights on the earth. The automobile has the headlights and the driver picks out the road as he goes. The flyer has no such advantage.

Giant Firefly Soon
“A plane cannot carry powerful searchlights. The machinery required to generate sufficient power for the operation of such light is too heavy. In flying, every ounce counts. I set myself to work on developing reflectors that would use a 32-candle-power lamp—small enough to be lighted without the addition of any heavy apparatus. The reflector is the main thing. The light must be gathered and directed so as to give the effect of a large searchlight.

“As yet I have not obtained the results I want. We equipped a Chrystal plane with the lights, strung them out on the wings and around the body. We went up. The plane made a pretty sight with its lights glowing and the dark sky for a background—but when we tried to land we didn’t have enough light.

“This is my vacation time,” Mrs. Brush laughed, “but I’ll be back at work pretty soon and I’m sure I can make a success of the landing lights.”

When you read the report of some poor astronomer who has seen a gigantic firefly gleaming in the heavens, you will know that Mrs. Brush has succeeded. 

Gravestone of Mittie Taylor Brush

 

Drawing enemy fire and fake clouds of cotton wool

How to draw the enemy's fire | Ken Kling

These are two of my favorite wartime cartoons, both of which were published in Cartoons Magazine (c1917). Above is a drawing by American cartoonist Ken Kling, with the caption: Cartoonists in the Trenches could be Used to Draw the Enemy's Fire. Below is an ingenious proposal for airplane camouflage by British artist Bernard Hugh, originally published in The Bystander (London), in which he recommends the use of large clumps of cloud-like cotton wool, with the caption: Camouflage for Aeroplanes in the Form of Clouds.

An approach to airplane camouflage | Bernard Hugh

WWI Camouflage Illustrations by Algernon Black 1918

Algernon Black (1918)

At this point, we have no information about a WWI-era British illustrator named Algernon Black. But several days ago, we ran across a two-part magazine article by Raymond Raife titled Camouflage and Q-Boats: Telling the Splendid Story of the VC's of our Mystery-Ships. Published in the annual compilation of a London-based periodical called The Boy's Own Paper (Vol 41, 1918-1919), the lengthy article is accompanied by about ten drawings pertaining to camouflage, signed by Black. We've reproduced a few of them above and below on this blog post.

Camouflage Artist | Mary (Mittie) Taylor Brush

George de Forest Brush, Mrs. Brush, c1888

Above George de Forest Brush and Mary Taylor Whelpley eloped (to the dismay of her parents) and married on January 11, 1886, on the bride's twentieth birthday. They were both artists, and for the rest of their married lives, he made beautiful portraits of her, most often holding one or more of their nine children (one died in infancy). This (my favorite) is his first portrait of her, dated c1888.

Having given birth to and raised so many children, how could Mary (better known as Mittie Taylor Brush) have the time and energy to do anything else? But she accomplished quite a lot. As is now currently featured in the August 2016 newsstand issue of the Smithsonian's AIR&SPACE Magazine (pp. 28-31), she was one of the country's first female aviators (as was her friend and sometime neighbor, Amelia Earhart), and the inventor of several attempts at airplane camouflage, by reducing its visibility (see her patent drawings below). As we have noted in earlier posts, her husband (a friend of Abbott H. Thayer) and their son (Gerome Brush) were also important contributors to World War I-era camouflage.

US Patent 1619100

Written by aerospace engineer Nick D'Alto, the title of the AIR&SPACE article is "Inventing the Invisible Airplane: When Camouflage Was Fine Art." It's a fascinating article, accurate and richly illustrated (although, oddly, her name is misspelled as "Mitty" throughout), and reveals (to great surprise) that parts of her airplane have survived. Discovered in a New Hampshire barn in 2011, its remains are currently on display at the Eagles Mere Air Museum in Pennsylvania.

US Patent 1293688

For a wealth of memorable stories about the Brushes and their married life, see their daughter's wonderful biography, George de Forest Brush: Recollections of a Joyous Painter (Peterborough NH: William L. Bauhan, 1970). See also Brush family articles and related info in CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (2009).

Camouflage Paintings | Pia Dehne

© Pia Dehne 2011

In the late 1960s, when we first began to write about art and camouflage, there wasn't much interest. But in recent years, the subject's popularity has grown phenomenally, and now it seems a commonplace for artists or academic scholars to be engaged, in one way or another, in camouflage-related research. Some of the results are fascinating, while, not surprisingly, a lot of what is being done is neither interesting nor innovative.

Among those whose art pertains to camouflage, I find of particular interest a series of paintings (oil on canvas) by German-born American artist Pia Dehne. One of those works (titled Red Leaf Hunter, 2011) is above, with a second below (F-16 Jet, 2011). She has an artist's website that includes a subsection on Camo Vision, which houses the series of paintings that I find of particular value. Her gallery representation is with Salomon Contemporary in NYC and with AJLART in Berlin.

© Pia Dehn 2011

books on art and camouflage

Camouflage Artist | McClelland Barclay

From the McClelland Barclay entry in CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage, pp. 40-41—

American illustrator McClelland Barclay (1891-July 18, 1943) [see top right photo above] was originally from St. Louis MO. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, then with George Bridgman and Thomas Fogarty at the Art Students League in New York. As early as 1912, his work was often featured in major US magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Saturday Evening Post and Ladies’ Home Journal.

During World War I, he produced recruiting posters for the US government, and worked with William Andrew MacKay in designing ship camouflage for the US Shipping Board.

In the 1920s and 30s, Barclay was widely known as an advertising illustrator, designing posters for the film industry, painting “pin-up girl” illustrations, and developing marketing images for leading manufacturers, the most popular of which were his paintings of sexy models for General Motors’ Body by Fisher sales campaign.

In 1938, he was appointed an Assistant Naval Constructor with the US Naval Reserve. He again worked on camouflage, and in 1940 he obtained a patent titled “Camouflaging” (US Patent No. 2190691) [top left above] for dazzle-like aircraft camouflage. In that year, an article in the New York Times reported that his patent was “for the camouflaging of airplanes by painting the wings with designs that were said to conceal the shape and make it difficult to judge the position of an airplane.” Some of his designs were applied to prototypes and tested [photos of three prototypes are pictured here], but were never actually implemented. During World War II, Barclay continued to experiment with camouflage and to design recruiting posters. Appointed a Lieutenant Commander, he was a passenger on a US Navy vessel that was struck by a torpedo near the Solomon Islands on July 18, 1943.

Also pictured above (in the bottom photo) is an earlier example of dazzle-like airplane camouflage (unrelated to Barclay's work), as published in the New York Herald in 1919, in which it was described as "an upside down flyer" and "a weirdly camouflaged airplane that was a feature in the recent aerial pageant at Hendon, England. Note the dummy landing carriage atop the upper plane and silhouetted pilot's head beneath the fuselage designed to puzzle the spectators as to whether or not the plane is flying rightside up."

additional sources

Camouflage Artist | Eric Sloane

Cover of Eric Sloane, Camouflage Simplified (New York: Devin Adair, 1942).

Eric Sloane (1905-1985) was a widely-known American artist and author, who wrote and illustrated (with exquisite pen-and-ink drawings) a 60-page overview of the principles of camouflage, titled Camouflage Simplified (New York: Devin Adair, 1942). It's a challenge to locate a copy to buy (the lowest price I found online a few minutes ago was $300), but it should be available through interlibrary loan, since, according to WorldCat, about 90 US libraries have it in their collections. Here's more about Sloane from a biographical article in Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (p. 362)—

[Sloane's] name at birth was Everard Jean Hinrichs. In 1919, his family moved to Long Island, where he became friends with his neighbor, the typographer Frederic Goudy, who taught him hand-lettering. He then studied briefly at the Art Students League (where he was influenced by John Sloan, whose name he would adopt c.1934, while adding an e at the end), and at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, where he was enrolled as a “graphic advertising major.” Due to poor attendance and failure to submit his work, he never completed his courses, yet he decided soon after to enroll at Yale University, where he lasted only several months. In the 1930s, through his interest in flying, he became friends with aviator Wiley Post, in the process of which he decided to paint “cloudscapes.” He studied meteorology at MIT, and later, during World War II, served with the Army Air Force as an instructional interpreter of complex flight-related terms. 

Airplane Camouflage

In a post-World War I article on "Aeronautical Camouflage" (Aerial Age Weekly, May 10, 1920, pp. 288-289ff), its author William R. Weigler (who was in charge of camouflage at McCook Field, now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton OH) contends that "The design of aircraft camouflage closely follows…[the] color schemes of the snake or fish. Both are round in form and in general have two distinct systems of coloration, one on the top, a mottled colored pattern and the other on the underside, a light tone of color, blending on the sides so as to eliminate all shadow effects." In one of the photographs accompanying the article (above left), there are four model airplanes, three of which are painted in monochrome khaki, black and clear varnish, while a fourth (to the left of the orange dot) has been disruptively painted with six colors, ranging "from light tan to dark blue green." In another experiment (above top right), the undersides of a model have been painted in a lozenge pattern which, viewed from a sufficient distance, merges into a continuous tone that simulates "a sky color." Below that is a more or less similar scheme against a sky background.

Above is another photograph from the same article. It shows six disruptively painted airplanes, each of which has been camouflaged with varying degrees of success. In particular, there is an effectively disrupted plane near the bottom left of the photograph, slightly left of center. Despite its camouflage, it can be easily located because of the target-like bull's-eye insignias on its wings.